Walk the 8-fold path and you will be rewarded. Rewarded with what? Eternal life? No. Riches? No. Heaven? No.
According to the laws and tenets listed in the religion known as Buddhism....if you achieve the savvy to follow this "Eightfold" yellow-brick-road and make it to the end of that road....you'll be rewarded with....
....Nothing. No-Thing.
At all. That's it, That's all.
Base. Ball.
(Woah, that's almost a Haiku, eh)
Yes, the official reward in Buddhism is to become Nothing. To no longer Exist. To simply Stop Being and achieve Formlessness. None of your actions will ever again have consequence. You and the particles and things that make You become Nothing At All. All the actions and re-actions involving the embodiment known as You simply dis-appear presently and Retro-Actively.
Freedom, Absolute Freedom. No more pain, no more sadness....and no more Suffering. Suffering shall cease. If you do not become Nothing you'll have to do it all over again....as a bug, or a fly, or a an E-coli, or a dog, or as one of the Beach Boys. Suffer again and again and again....
That's what Buddhism says, anyways. Do I believe that? No....it doesn't make any sense....but what if it was true? That'd be fun.
108
That is the magic number in Buddhism. There's 108 beads on a Buddhist necklace, there's 108 "desires", there's 108 "lies that can be told by humans", there's 108 texts of the Ancient Sages, there's 108 paths to Truths....and so on.
It's a big deal number in Buddhism. Are there 108 forms of Defeat? Yes....in fact it is said that there are 36 "Divine Forms of Defeat" and 72 "Earthly Forms of Defeat" and it is by encountering and suffering through 108 forms of defeat that you can only then claim to have experienced and understand "Defeat."
Defeat is just another of the 108 Paths to Truth and a method to achieve the "End of Suffering" within Buddhism. Nothing more and Nothing less.
108 Forms of Defeat.
Cubs
The Cubs have been defeated in the National League Championship Series and when the clock turns over the new year on January, 1st of 2016....the Cubs will not have won a World Series in 100 and 8 years. They have not been Champions in 108 years. They have not Won in 108 years.
The Cubs have been defeated in a multitude of fashions over the last 108 years. By "Natural Laws" which govern the Universe such as "bad luck" yet also by less divine machinations such as "human error". They have been halted to Victory by "Divine" forces as well as "Earthly" forces.
Ivan DeJesus
Billy Goats, Bartmen, Leon Durham, Ivan DeJesus, Harry Caray, Doug Dascenzo, Bleecher Bums, Ryne Sandberg, Ivy on Brick Walls, Andre Dawson, Fergie Jenkins, Hot Dogs, Fresh Air, Jerome Walton, Ron Santo, Cold Beer....and Ernie Banks. There's so many names, things, fixtures, actions, and re-actions involved in this rich 108 year history of Total Defeat.
One Hundred and Eight years of defeat....36 of which were Divine ones and 72 which would be regarded as Earthly Defeats. They have achieved all the possible variations of defeat. Through these 108 journeys along the divine path of Defeat they have faced all forms of suffering known to human man. The entity known as the Chicago Cubs is now Formless and Without Form.
They have become the Eternal Embodiment of Defeat Forever and Always. According to the Divine tenets of Buddhism they have achieved Formlessness....They exist and will continue to exist...but as...
Nothing. No-Thing. At All. Base. Ball.
Are you wondering what I'm wondering? If the Cubs through 36 divine Defeats and 72 earthly Defeats have achieved the End of Suffering and Official Nothingness....then why can we still see them? Why do they still exist? Maybe it is NOT them which have ceased to exist but something else?
I'm sure you know the answer.....but let's state it anyways.
Suffering No Longer Exists. It's Over. Through their 108 year journey on the 8-fold path of Defeat, the Cubs intertwined themselves with Suffering.....they became One with Suffering. They ARE Suffering. Suffering is THEM. The Cubs can be defined as Suffering and Suffering can be defined as the Cubs. These entities are now One.
When a Merger of such a magnitude takes place...only one of those Entities can come out Existing whilst the other must cease to Exist. It is the Laws of Buddhism as such...is it not?
Thus, it seems the Cubs and Suffering have Merged and yet The Cubs still exist. Does that mean what I think it does? During the 108 year Journey through Suffering on the Path of Defeat...have the Cubs simply gobbled up Suffering....like a frog would gobble up a fly? During their intertwining 108 year merging procedure.....have these two components which are part of the fabric of the Universe....Cubs and Suffering....have they somehow cancelled each other out in perfect balance?
Ladies and Gentlemen....The Cubs have Conquered Suffering. The whole notion of Suffering will now have no choice but to slowly cease and desist itself from our Universe.
Wow. That's pretty cool.
What Does This Mean For Humanity?
What does this Brave New World in which the Universal Component formally known as "Suffering" has ceased to exist and no longer applies to Any Body actually mean for all animals and bugs and humans?
I dunno.
Basically, we can all exit our homes/dwellings tomorrow, look to the sky, and say to ourselves...
"Hey. Wow, Suffering doesn't even Exist anymore. That's Wicked!Thanks Cubs."
What is a World Without Suffering? It's so part of our lives....where do we as a Universe even go from here? Who knows.
Are we Approaching a Global Era of Universal Happiness for all Living Beings? YES.
I don't know 'bout you but I'm pretty down with it. Happiness sounds fun....for a change, anyway. When you really get down to it...Suffering sort of sucks. It's not fun....at all. I'm actually pretty thankful the Cubs united themselves with Suffering after experiencing 108 forms of Defeat and through a process of osmosis somehow managed to Conquer Suffering and dispel it from all our lives.
Thank You.....and may Ivan DeJesus be with you (and also with You).
This Emblem represents The Infinity of Cubs Conquering Suffering
I don't play a lot of video games anymore, these days. I always liked the Metal Gear franchise and played the new Metal Gear game at a friend's place over the last few weeks. Playing this new one and watching youtube of the fourth game's story scenes...I've seen the whole story from 8-bit Nintender 'til now.....and I have to say that as far as writing goes....Metal Gear might very well be the silliest and most needlessly convoluted yarn ever spun.
It took almost THIRTY YEARS to tell this story and now that it's over....the only word to describe this story is: MESS. It's a big mess....but as far as video games go, is it the King of the Konvoluted? Is it the most asinine story ever told in video games?
We're gonna look at three video game scripts that can be regarded as the most convoluted nonsense of all time and then we'll see if Metal Gear is really the King of Konvulution.
Notes before we Start
1. I read a lot of material and am always interested in text heavy business. A lot of video games are some of the most text-heavy things I've ever dealt with. A lot of games over the years are pretty epic stories that are basically like 30 hour movies or books. This article is more about writing than anything else and focuses on story telling...it is about video games but NOT the gameplay of the video games but the story telling of them. Like, Metal Gear on PS1 is probably one of the greatest games ever game-play wise....I'm not looking at that....I'm just talking about stories of the games and the stories being bad....but not the games themselves.
2. I haven't had a console since PlayStation 2...so I mean...I haven't dealt with games since like the early 2000s....I'm sure there's been stupider stories in video games in the last decade but I wouldn't really know or be able to comment on that. These following three entries are mainly from the 90s and early 2000s....I don't know much about the last dozen years of video games so I can't comment.
Convoluted and Asinine Stories. Which was the Worstest?
Probably gonna have a lot of spoilers in here, I dunno though, I might just call it bad in a variety of ways....I don't even know how to wrap my head around some of these stories let alone write about them.
1. Metal Gear: The Entire Series
I don't even wanna get into this story....like, where the hell do you even start? The twist and turns this story has taken over the last 25 years have ranged from nonsensical to needless to pointless to un-necessary.
Explaining this story to someone is just not possible. It is not possible to explain it because it doesn't make any sense at all. The Big Boss character, The Ocelot character, every other fucking character...none of what they do seems based on any sort of concrete logic. It's like these people just do the wackiest crap yet there's 5 hours of cut scenes to try and explain why they're doing this downright NONSENSE for.
If I went back in time and played every Metal Gear game from NES to MSX to PS1 to PS2 to Now...I would honestly skip every cut scene that didn't have a chick in a bikini top in it. Paying attention to the motives behind these characters that you're engaging with in this game is simply not worth your time.
Take Ocelot....what are the motives behind what he does? Why is he doing what he does? There's cut scenes to try and explain it but it makes no sense. You had a cool character who was like an Old West Gunslinger....just fucking stick with that. He was cool from his first appearance. Try and read the Wikia Page which explains what this old gunslinger has done in this series over the last 25 years (Here). Yeah, if you read through that wikia article....that's where they took this character, this pretty cool looking gunslinger, if you read that billion word Wikia page explaining what this character has done in this series....first of all DON'T waste your time doing that....don't read that article....all you'll have is a headache after....that's all.
So Ocelot hypnotized himself to believe he had the brain of the man who's arm he replaced his amputated arm with? Why did he hypnotize himself into thinking he was this person? Was there any conceivable reason as to why? No. Not at all. Nothing this character does makes even A LICK of sense. Ever. The motives behind what this character does is far fetched to the point where you just play these through these stories to laugh at them.
So Big Boss, the villain from the first two games and who you get to play as in one of the PS2 games...let me get this straight now....never mind....I don't want to get this straight. The new plot twist in the Big Boss character in the new game is simply one of the dumbest things I've seen anyone do in a story before. If you play to the ending in Metal Gear V, you'll be treated to what is likely the dumbest ending in any story that's ever been told. If you think the pointless twists in Night Shamalan movies are out of nowhere...the ending of MGV is out of further than nowhere...it's out of whole cloth. The escape from the hospital part and that motor cycle scene has got to be the dumbest thing I've seen on a screen in long time. Pointless, needless nonsense. Pointless needless nonsense to the utmost degree.
I have a feeling the maker of these games is getting sick of them and is just purposely making dumb stories on purpose. No one trying to do a good job would sit down and think up something like that.
I wonder if the story team has an editor or something like that. I bet it's like there's an editor who goes back and reads these scripts and says things like.....
"Wait, this makes too much sense this part....can you try and throw some pointless nonsensical crap in here? Maybe some random silliness or some dumb shit just so it's not so plausible? This is making too much easy-to-follow sense in this section you have to fix that. Pronto." "This character is pretty normal...can you like make them retarded? Maybe this character can graft another character's arm onto his stump and then somehow hypnotize himself to believe he's that other character for no apparent reason? Can we change it to that? Okay, great, thanks. What? Of course he can hypnotize himself....he's a master interrogator...everyone knows interrogator's can self-hypnotize themselves!"
"Hmmmm....what if Big Boss was actually a generic soldier dude from some dumb helicopter...that way we can clean up a plot hole from 1988 where Big Boss came back from the dead? Remember in one of those games back in the 80s? Big Boss was like a big robot at the end of the game or something? He was supposed to be dead but we forgot about that....so how about we fix that plot hole from 30 years ago by making Big Boss actually just some random guy on a helicopter that was in one of the other games? That makes sense, no?"
This game didn't need a Bizarro-Editor it needed an Editor-Editor.
Okie Dokie so.....From what I've ingested from this series over the last three decades...I've narrowed it down to this.......Big Boss is either:
A) Sean Connery
B) A Gigantic Purple Robot
C) A Pretty Cool Looking Guy Solid Snake was Cloned From
D) Some Random Person who very Briefly Spoke to You on a Helicopter
One of those four people/robots is Big Boss. I guess in the end, now that Metal Gear is sown up shut after almost 30 years....it is now up to us to decide which of these four we want to be Big Boss. For me it's between Snake Eater and the Gigantic Purple Robot and my heart is telling me Big Boss is the Gigantic Purple Robot.
Wow. It's hard to understand the Big Boss character when you can't even narrow down WHAT he his let alone who he is.
2. Final Fantasy 8
I have a brain-ache just thinking about Metal Gear....but the thesis was to throw down 3 of the silliest stories in video games and decide whether Metal Gearis in fact the silliest of all time. Next on the list is the horrendous story from the hit 90s game...Final Fantasy 8.
I used to really like these Final Fantasy games. The one where you run around as Cecil, Yang, Edge, Rose, Rydia, Cid, and that Spoony Bard was a fucking GOOD game...the one where you suplex trains with Sabin, and whip shurikens with Shadow and Quadra Slice monsters and go super-saiyan with Terra....that game was AMAZING. The one where Mr. T and a chain smokin' guy who swears and a hot chick have to run around....that one was fucking AWESOME.
Then came Final Fantasy 8...the biggest stupidest mess. This game turned me off to the series big time and with good reason. The story telling is downright atrocious. You could see it starting in the previous Seventh installment though too....like that scene where Cloud tells you what happened with Seph-a-Fool in that spooky mansion and reactor. Also there's a part where you have to go through Cloud's Magicant mind with Tifa and it just WON'T END! ARRRGH. You're in his dumb emo-mind for like a fucking hour! Those two story telling scenes in Seven were very hard to get through. Forget beating Emerald Weapon, forget beating Ruby...the hardest part of FF7 was listening to that emo-jerkoff Cloud tell stories.
I remember there was an option in one of those story scenes in FF7 where Barret was all like, "yo, fool...I pity this story let's get outta here!" and then an option variable comes up for you. You think you can skip the story by agreeing with Barret there...BUT NOOOOO...Barret leaves but everyone else STAYS and the fucking stupid story continues. Why couldn't I run away from the story like Barret did?
Fuck. Anyways...Final Fantasy 7, despite two awful emo story scenes, was still a SICK-AS-FUCK good video game.
But Final Fantasy 8? No way Jose. The emo seeds that were planted in 7 blossomed in 8....with a lead character so un-likeable that even Sabin suplexing him on his head 5000 times wouldn't wake this jabroni up out of his emo coma. Not just the lead but NO CHARACTER is likeable in this shitty game.
Remember 8 years ago in grade school? OH YA!
The coup-de-gras in 8....is when all these stupid annoying teenage hipster emo shitballs gather around for one of those extended story unraveling scenes (where you sit and press X for like 20 minutes while they talk to each other)....and all of a sudden these emo kids that you've been running around forests and towns with for the last 20 hours....all just happen to suddenly realize they all knew each other in grade school.
???????????
After 20 hours of game play of these horrible little teens being around each other....they all just collectively seem to have remembered that they all knew each other in not just their Muppet years but in their Muppet-Baby years too? They all grew up in the same orphanage except they all just conveniently forget...until....they all feel like collectively remembering and reminiscing for 20 full minutes at the player's expense?
That's All Star level writing stupidity. In all stories ever told that moment in FF8 is very likely the dumbest thing ever done in story telling. It has to be. Fuck. How in post editing could someone have not stepped up and said..."Hey story team....you know this is fucking retarded as shit, right?"
That happens about mid-game and it's all down hill from there. These teens in FF8 are the most unlikeable, ill-conceived, and downright stupid characters in any video game....ever.
Two of these characters then have the NERVE to fall in love and engage in extended romantic scenes including one vomit-inducer where they float through space together but with only one air supply for the both of them. Aaaaaaaw, how romantic!
Shutup, Air Supply. Just shut the fuck up, Air Supply.
You gotta watch these bozos float "romantically"through space for like 10 minutes....and all you really want to do in this game is DUEL-glitch some gremlins and shit and drop some Ifrits on some goblins.
Final Fantasy 8 sucks. It was a very very bad game.
3. Chrono Cross
Final entry coming up here! It's the sequel to one of the fucking greatest video games EVER... I'm talking about Chrono Trigger! Ya!
Back in 19-whatever-dee-7 everyone was flipping out over a sequel to Chrono Trigger...the most beautiful game. Everyone was flippin' out....and what did we get? Chrono Cross...the biggest fucking mess of a thing you've ever even seen!
Look, this is only covering Story and nothing else. Like with Metal Gear who had amazing gameplay but a bad story....Chrono Cross had pretty cool graphics and really good music....but an awful story.
Man the music in this game was fucking good. Very relaxing-ass music, for sure. The story though? It's a big big big big MESS.
It's a BIG MESS. It's really MESSED UP.
Like, Metal Gear, I don't even know where to start with why it's a mess....it's like Jello....I can't even mentally grab on to something to start with and get going with this mess of a jello of a story.
First off, all the beloved characters from the greatest game Chrono Trigger? Dead. They all died. How? Some un-interesting half-cat half-man Cat-Man killed them all before the story even starts. They're dead. I think only the robot from Trigger wasn't killed by Cat-Man...I think he died by turning himself into a virus or something and tried to poison time. I don't know. I actually really don't know...this game makes no sense.
To help it make less sense...there's like 300 characters....most of them playable characters....yet the backstory applied to these 300 characters is minimal to non-existent. Most serve no purpose to the story...they're just there.....in your party....and you don't even know why. At least straw voodoo man, the fungus man, and the mexican wrestler guy look pretty cool....but I have no idea what purpose they serve to the story at all.
If telling you all the old characters from Trigger are dead (as an aside mid-game), and then replacing them with 300 pointless characters wasn't enough to make you wonder where the fuck they're going with this sequel....they throw something else to make it even whackier.....they make you play in two worlds...each identical to each other....one dimension where you do exist and one where you don't...and you got to back and forth through these two worlds trying to remember what's different in these two identical worlds. They did this gimmick in Dragon Quest 6 too....and it wasn't a good gimmick then either.
Just trying to remember this game is confusing. It's so fucking dumb. Playing it was even more confusing. They try and help you out and explain the story to you at one point in the game...using ghosts from Chrono Trigger....and it really feels like the writer is trying to tell the reader something along the lines of....
"Ya Player, I know this game is retarded and makes no sense and....um....well....uh....you remember that Flame thing from the castle part in the world where you don't exist? It was ummmm....it has to do with a Spanish guy named Miguel and Miguel is like a bad guy I think....and......uhhhh....I don't remember what I wrote but...here, wait a sec Player....I'll put some ghost children versions of characters that I killed off to explain it to you....okay? You understand now? Great, let's keep going!"
These Ghost-Kids of killed off Characters will help explain!
You know your story makes no sense when the writer has to stop mid-game to try his best to explain to you just what the fuck is going on here in this mess of yarn. That ghost child explanation part was more than just a head-scratcher....it felt like the writer was apologizing to the reader for how stupid his/her story was.
Like Metal Gear going back to fill plot holes that make no sense...Squaresoft re-released Chrono Trigger on the PS1 after Cross was released and they tried to sew up the holes in Cross by adding a silly CG movie to the re-release of Trigger. Seems that little back-water village with five buildings from Trigger becomes a super-army nation in like 2 years...and that town literally murders everyone in Guardia is what the cut scene suggested....and ya, it makes no sense. It's like trying to fix a pot hole in the road by dumping shampoo in it instead of cement. Trying to fix Cross's plot holes is not something ANYONE should attempt doing....there's no way to fix those....there's nothing you can do to fix that because it's fucking nonsense....total nonsense.
Chrono Cross's story was a new level of Mess.....I don't think anything can approach how convoluted this game's story was.
Conclusion
Is Metal Gear the most convoluted and downright stupid video game story ever unraveled? Hmmmmm........no, it's not.
Metal Gear is a special kind of silly that, at times, I think Kojima did on purpose. I think he may have been influenced by Takeshi Kitano and Shigesato Itoi....and similar to them....he tried to be annoying and over-the-top on purpose in these games.
Compared to games like Final Fantasy 8, and Chrono Cross...there's no way Metal Gear is the most convoluted and silly story ever told. So it's between Eight and Cross....and....Eight is just plain bad...like awful stupid and bad.....but Cross? Cross is legit convoluted as fuck. I don't even think that Masato Kato himself really even knew what the heck he was writing...he just kept going and going hoping the nonsense would just string together somehow.
All things considered...out of games I've played (there's probably hundreds of dumb stories in games I haven't played by-the-way)...Chrono Cross is the most Needlessly Convuluted Video Game Story of All Time!
Look, Hideo Kojima, and Metal Gear staff. Let's be serious for moment....Metal Gear has provided a lot of people with S++ caliber entertainment for almost 30 years. Even if the story telling in Metal Gear is Top 3 most convoluted of all time....this series may still very likely be the greatest ever in the entire history of video games. The Metal Gear Solid on PS1 is very likely the greatest game of all time....all things considered. The staff and people responsible for the Metal Gear series should be very proud of themselves for the close to 30 years of entertainment they've created.
Does the media give too much fame and attention to the lives of losers and cowards who murder innocent people? Yes they do.
Personal Pre-Amble
Gonna start with a personal observation from my life experience pool before anything else on this topic.
One time I attended a sporting event where a fan ran onto the field in a leopard skin speedo and started to steal the bases on the baseball field at Olympic Stadium. I was laughing and it only lasted about a minute or so.
When I got home I was expecting to see it talked about and shown in the post game reports or on ESPN or TSN or whatever...but interestingly NO ONE even mentioned it.
Why?
Because bodies like the NFL and MLB have a strict no broadcast rule for people running onto fields. They don't put the cameras on them during live broadcasts and do not talk about them in news reports on the event afterwards. That's official written-in-stone policy for most if not all sporting bodies.
The reasoning is simple. If people at home see this behavior talked about or promoted on TV...they will see it as a way to gain fame and notoriety for themselves and copy the behavior. Thus, these fans who engage in shenanigans on the playing field ARE NEVER RECORDED ON VIDEO OR MENTIONED EVER AGAIN.
It works too. It's increasingly rare to see anyone do this behavior anymore. There's no more Kissing Bandits or leopard skin speedo jabronies running on fields like in the 80s and 90s. In the 80s they promoted the behavior of the "Kissing Bandit" and it became a method of becoming famous. Streakers were huge in the 90s.....we don't see many streakers anymore either. Mainly because they aren't given attention if they streak these days.
The ban on giving attention to fans who rush the field has 100% worked. It is very rare to see this behavior now a days.
Attention Directed at Stupid Fucking Loser Nobodies who Murder Innocent People
Why did they do it? Who were they? What did their friends and family have to say about why they did it? Blah blah blah blah blah. They talk about these losers for MONTHS at a time.
Why stop at talking about them? Why not make a stupid fucking movie about them too? Make them some mis-understood protagonist or some fucking bullshit in a made-for-tv-movie about their dumb and stupid lives. On and on and on...
....we'll actually probably never stop hearing about these stupid fucking nobodies. We're gonna here about this Oregon loser now for the next two years. It's friggin' ridiculous.
There should be a federal ban on this type of reporting. If you make these people into famous mis-understood heroes and give them the fame and notoriety they are seeking...then you're creating a climate where this behavior is being promoted to other isolated maniacs.
If next school shooting the report went like this:
"A Coward and loser, who will remain unnamed due to publication ban, killed innocent people and himself today. You can donate money to victims families at this following address. Our thoughts are with the deceased." -(hypothetical news report)
No photo of the loser, no name, no nothing. No fame, no glory, no anything. Doesn't that make more sense? No made-for-TV-movie, no in-depth report on his motives or whatever was going through his stupid head. No notoriety of any kind attached to that person....AT ALL.
Now in the case that the assailant is not deceased after the attack this ban obviously could not be applied. The public has to know if there are maniacs on the loose...and in the case where they are put behind bars...the public has a right to know the crimes committed by an individual if they are ever released back into the public. This hypothetical ban would only apply to assailants who were deceased after the incident.
If a man-hunt is on for a un-apprehended criminal then this hypothetical ban would obviously not be in-place. Wanna make it clear it would only be if the assailant died in the incident.
Conclusion
If a loser murders innocent people....and also dies in the incident...the name of that person and photographs of him (or her....chicks can be serial killers too) will not be allowed in the press in order to not attribute fame to an individual for dubious reasons.
The Red Sox (one of the BIGGEST teams in baseball) is on board for what seems to be becoming a tradition of the Blue Jays hosting exhibition games on April 1st and 2nd at Montreal's Olympic Stadium...the ex-home of the Ex-Expos.
Baseball Legend, Cro, with owner and president of Red Sox
The official spokesman for the return of the Expos to Montreal, Mr. Warren Cromartie, President of the Montreal Baseball Project was in Boston a few weeks ago finalizing details to get the Red Sox to barn storm north of the boarder to the barren baseball-less city of Montreal where fans really want that baseball back. His mission seems successful as the Red Sox organization was excited at the idea of coming here to play some good ol' ball games.
We had the Mets come play here in 2014, where both teams honored the life of Gary Carter. They also invited the roster of the 1994 Expos to the pre-game ceremony and everyone collectively flipped out to see those dudes again.
Vlad, The OC, and the Mayor in 2015
We had the Reds come play two games here in 2015, Tony Perez and others came to hang before the game....but during the second game....VLAD showed up....and everyone collectively flipped again. Tim Wallach's son got to dress for that game for the Reds and got to see his dad's old stomping grounds and the fans gave a standing ovation to Chad Wallach because they remembered and liked his dad so much. It was fun, it was good, everyone had a good time at it.
In 2016, thanks to Cromartie's trip to Boston, it is 100% confirmed that the team coming to the Big O next year will surely be the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox are very popular here in Montreal...mainly I think due to their championship seasons and it probably has a lot to do with Pedro "sharing his ring" with us when he won one with the Sox.
Pedro back at Big O (circa 1999)
I remember the first time I saw the Red Sox at the Big O, it was 1999 and interleague play was still a new fangled thing-a-ma-bob. The pitcher at the game I was at for the Sox was none other than Pedro Martinez, the guy who won the only Cy Young in Expos history for Montreal two years prior in 1997. We friggin' crushed Pedro in that game (box here)...well he only gave up 4 runs over 6 innings...we crushed Mark Portugal and Mark Guthrie more than we did Pedro. I remember that game, I even remember where I was sitting and everything. It happened like over 15 years ago too.
Things are Gettin' Nuts, Yo.
I saw baseball legend Ellis Valentine tweet something today while I was at work to a sports writer. Valentine, who comes up for these games to sit with the fans in attendance and watch the ball game and reminisce and chill and everything, tweeted that he might have to sit in the "nose-bleeds" this year round. ("Nose bleeds" refers to the altitude being so high that your nose starts bleeding. It means bad seats. It's those seats Bob Uecker sits in when he drinks Miller Lites. It's those Uecker seats).
Why? Because after being on sale for ONE SINGLE DAY....both games are almost 100% SOLD OUT. Wow. If you live in Montreal or want to travel here to watch these games you better buy your tickets right now because they went like HOT CAKES, MAN. They sold like hot cakes.
I've sat in the "400s" before over the years, I sat there for the Reds games this year...I never took no elevator as Ellis Valentine states in that tweet exists. I didn't know there was one. I always walk up those winding gray cement pathways. I actually liked doing it this year too. Walking with all the other fans and seeing all the Expos hats and shirts...seeing old people with hats and jackets that looked worn in and like they bought those Expos hats in like 1985...and seeing young kids with new shiny Expos gear. I liked being with those people. Those are my people, they really are.
Every year I write an article about these exhibition games and every year I predict that 100K will come over the course of 2 games. Both years they came close with well over 90K both times...this year we hit 96K a mere four thousand off of getting One Hundred Thousand Baseball Fans over two days.
This year I am not predicting/speculating/prognosticating 100 thousand fans...I am 100% GARAUNTEE-ING that 100K will be there over the course of two days at the Big O in 2016 for Red Sox versus Blue Jays. Mark my most humble of human words on that.
I love you, Baseball. I seriously seriously do.
I got a sinking suspicion that Pedro might be honored before one of these games. I haven't heard anything official....but there are rumors abounds that Hall of Famer and all-around legend Pedro Martinez will be back at the Big O in 2016.
Gonna right a short one just to point something out. Social media is wigging out loose over something that I'm not sure the average hippie/jabroni/mongoloid really understands.
The main conspiracy/natural/organic sites and publications are running wild with news that California is putting a warning label on products that contain glyphosate. It's a very scary sounding chemical and the natural-conspiracists are having a field day with this.
All I want to do here is make a little chart which will list common crap we expose ourselves to everyday and what the general consensus is on what is the Median Lethal Dose of those substances.
Term Define:
What is Median Lethal Dose? Or LD50? It is the amount of a substance that if consumed by a human guy or human lady...will more than likely result in the death of that person.
I've had many jobs where I've worked with chemicals and I know how dangerous they can be...but I also know that it will actually take a fuck load of them in a lot of cases to kill you. I got that Heirloom Furniture Stripper (or some such product) in my eyes, big time once. The old formula too...the new formula smells worse but it won't even fuck you up at all.
Yo, my brush was hardened from the last time I was using it and I pushed the brush to the bottom of the container of stripper I was using to force the brush to open up and un-harden...and it did...but really fast and it shot the stripper up into my eyes. Yo, I still remember that...and my memory is stupid. I remember that pain like it was yesterday...maybe the top pain event I can think of. So much of it and directly in the eyes...it was like burning and burning. I was jumping mad...I thought I was gonna go Super Saiyan or some shit, g. It was bad.
Ya, and one time....I swallowed deck bleach by accident while I was water sealing a deck. It tasted bad, bleach, fuck.
I dunno, I can attest that chemicals are very bad for you and dangerous but I mean...I'm still fucking alive...I'm not even that scared of them, really.
Anyways this isn't important, it's just a personal preamble....okay, here is a list of various substances and their Median Lethal Dose.
LD50 Chart
Consuming this amount of the following, WITHOUT VOMITING or pee-ing or sweating anything out, will very likely spell the end for you....
These are denoted in mg/kg (this stat means how much of it in grams into how much you weigh in kilos) and the list is in descending order from safest shit to least safest shit to consume. We'll start with water and work our way down, okay?
(with mg/kg...let's say you weigh like 170 pounds or 77 kilos....you'd have to multiply the mg/kg by your weight of 77 kilos to find out how many mg will kill you. For example salt is 3000mg times 77 which is 231K in mg or about 231 grams. It would take 231 grams in one sitting of just eating salt by the spoonful to kill more than half of all people who weigh 77 kilos)
I love these stats...they are like Dragon Ball Z power levels. The higher the number the safer it is, okay?
Water: Too big for mg/kg...You need to drink about 8 liters or 1.5 gallons without puking/sweating/peei-ing to overdose on water. Unless a body was rendered unable to sweat or pee or puke I don't think you really can overdose on water.
Table Sugar: 29700 mg/kg (about 150 table spoons in one sitting without barfing will do it)
Vitamin C: 11900 mg/kg (it's hard to OD on OJ but it is possible)
Alcohol (ethanol): 7060 mg/kg. (About 20 hard shots without vomiting or without getting your stomach pumped may kill you.)
Table Salt: 3000 mg/kg (about 14 table spoons without pukin')
THC (the muscle relaxant in weed): 1270 mg/kg
Arsenic: 763 mg/kg
Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol): 352 mg/kg
Aspirin: 293 mg/kg
Caffeine: 192 mg/kg (About 100 cups of coffee)
Cyanide (the stuff from James Bond movies): 6.4 mg/kg
Those are the toxic levels of dosage for stuff around us that we've heard about. Note that things like Vitamin D3 indeed are very toxic but our body needs it in small doses or you'll get rickets and gait. Our body needs all kinds of scary sounding things in small doses to be healthy like iron, zinc and other metals, even.
Nicotine is very toxic but you're not getting a lot of milligrams from smoking one cigarette. Still, I would rank smoking as the least healthy thing you can probably do. It really is.
So I'm not showing you these lethal doses to scare you...Vitamin D3 is low on the list but it's not something to be scared of.
So where does Glyphosate, the substance California is putting warning labels on, fit on the LD50? It's about 5000 mg/kg...putting it between salt and alcohol. It's lethal dose isn't that insane.
"If it's 'Safe' You Should DRINK IT, Smart Guy!!"
I was watching a video the other day where a natural-conspiracy type is saying to some old business PR-looking guy...that if glyphosate is safe then why don't you drink it, Mr. Man!? In my opinion, that man shouldn't drink it to prove its safety as a pest-control substance....there's no reason for him to drink a glass of glysophate to appease people's worries.
My response to that would be...well, you naturoes use animal shit to fertilize your plants while they are in the fields...if you think animal shit is safe to use on the plants we eat...then why don't you prove it's safe by eating a handful of manure?
I think people should start drinking glyphosate to prove this silly point ONLY after organic people eat shit to prove shit fertilizer is safe to use in fields.
What's that? You're not going to eat a bowl of manure? Well then why are you using it on the food I eat? You're not gonna eat a bowl of pathogen infested shit to ease my concerns of organic farmers using poop to grow food for people (AND CHILDREN) to put in their precious human bodies?
In the end, that logic gets us no where. Look, I'll eat food that was fertilized with shit and I'll eat food that had bugs kept off it with glyphosate. Neither is something that really scares me...I wash my fruits and stuff anyway before I eat on them.
IMPORTANT: If you Think you are Poisoned!
Drink water! Vomit! And Call your Doctor or poison control! It's not a joke...I'm not trying to say poison is safe by any means...I'm just trying to put the LD50s into context. If you really ever do get poisoned and shit then remember those three things. It's like STOP n' DROP n' ROLL for fire...but it's for poison...it is... 1. Drink Water 2. Puke 3. Call your Doctor or Poison Control
AEEEEIEEE! He's using POISON! AAAAAH!
I'm not trying to say poison is safe...I'm just saying that, sometimes I don't think the Organic/Natural community really understands chemistry. Everything on earth is a fucking chemical. Our bodies evolved to feed off of some of these chemicals (oxygen, water, and other shit) so people who think they can live a chem free life don't understand anything about the world around them.
You can over dose on all sorts of stuff and die. The science right now that is available is placing glyphosate in the region of pretty safe to have exposure to. That can change, but as of right now it is not known to be a fantastically dangerous chemical.
You know, I've had strong chemicals pretty much burn out my eyes...I've felt bleach work its way through my system....I know how fucking awful these dangerous chems can be...but when it comes to this particular chem...I'm not sure glyphosate is as crazy dangerous as the Naturals make it out to be. Its LD50 is pretty chill.
Would I drink a glass of glyphosate? No, I wouldn't...I'm not stupid. Probably tastes bad. Then again, I wouldn't eat a bowl of manure either. Both of these are used in fields to help grow crops and whatever residue, if any, that is left on the produce before I eat it...is negligible and I'm not scared of it because (A) I know it's not a lethal amount and (B) I run water all over fruits and vegetables before I eat them to get any weird stuff that's on them off (like crap from the farm or people who handled them).
I'm not a schill, I'm not anything. This is my opinion. I don't get any money from anyone at all to write opinions in this blog. I don't like these big companies either, I'm not on their side. I just honestly don't think the organic crowd has any grasp on reality sometimes. Like, you can argue with a scientist about facts but you can't argue with a natural/organic person because they really don't have any concrete knowledge loaded into their brains to work with other than conspiracies they've read on the internet.
They really have a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" thing going on. What if glyphosate really is bad but the Natural-Conspiracy-Enthusiasts have just been so offensively misguided over the years that everything they say is taken by anyone with intelligence as being automatically wrong. I don't think it's constructive for them to have distanced themselves so far from rationality to the point where no one can take them seriously anymore.
What if the Natural/Organic weirdos really do have an important and correct concern to voice one day but years of nonsense will act as a miasmic wall which will prevent anyone from taking them seriously? They've crossed the Boy Cried Wolf line so long ago...what if one of their concerns actually does hold merit one day? There's no chance in hell anyone would take it seriously after the years and years of offensively misleading nonsense they promote.
I didn't watch baseball for like 10 years. From 2004 to 2014. When my team (Expos) moved I didn't watch it or follow it anymore. I play baseball sometimes for fun and stuff but I didn't follow it for a full decade.
The exhibition games in Montreal lately and the talk and the Cro and the mayor and everyone trying to get the team back has me following it again big time. It's different now than 10 years ago I can tell you that much. I can say WITH CERTAINTY from what I see that most if not all of the roids are gone....at least the whacky whacky hormone ones at least.
There's things in the baseball world I missed a lot...and now that there's some hope that my team might come back....I gotta follow it again. I like the Royals, I like the Mets....I like those pitching teams...I love how the Royals run the bags.
I miss this shit, man. I do.
I wanna talk some baseball, I really fucking do, I want to talk more about the science end of the game right now though instead of something funner. I've been reading shit's that getting me up into a jabroni of a tizzy lately, I must say. I want to rap loose about the Supination vs. Pronation debate...which is not very talked about...outside of hardcore mechanic circles.
I want to first define what Supination is and what Pronation is before we even get started because... if you follow this debate online the main search result is: "What is Pronation?" and we can't have a buck debate if most maw flippers don't even know the terms even.
I'm interested in this lately because Science is coming into the equation here and it's not looking pretty. I'm not happy with University people's "findings" and the articles being published in accredited academic journals at this point. All the S vs. P meta-data journal articles were done on CADAVERS (non-living bodies)...the findings are close to useless and absurd. I'm just gonna tell you straight up what the heck all this crap is. Okay?
Let's Define These Terms of Terms
Supination
What the heck is Supination? In pitching mechanic terms we gonna deal with arms so....Supination is the act of turning the arm out as you make your arm motion....you corkscrew your arm out pointing away from yourself. It is the act of turning it "Out" and that's basically it. It's not hard to understand what Supination is.
When I was a kid at grade school, kids used to impress each other and make each other flip by turning their hands back or I used to curdle my fingers into my hand sorta...we called it beng "Double-Jointed" but that was just nonsense talk. You CAN stretch like this...it's hard...you don't need "two-joints" but you can. The thing is...why would you want to?
Now, what is Pronation?
Pronation
Well if you're not OUT then you IN like Doug Flynn, no? Basically, yeah. Every human on earth who has arms...I'd say 99.9999% of humans with functioning arms....can turn their dumb arms In pretty much a billion times easier than they can turn their arms Out. This lady for instance can pronate to the point of the arm being upside down:
She's not "double jointed"
In like Flynn
She can do that because that's Humans base setting...we can turn In WAY MORE than we can turn Out. If she would have tried to go Upside Down with her arm by going Outwards she would have done an incredible amount of damage to her body. Turning In to go around is actually pretty easy. That's just the base setting of the Humanistic Body As Such...we can go In with our dumb arms but we can't go Out.
Try it right now...try to Upside Down your Arm by going In/Towards yourself and see how far you get...now try to Upside Down your Arm by going Out/Away from your body....which one was easier? Yeah if you're like any other person then In/Towards was way easier and you got farther.
That's just how our bodies are...it's plain fact. Plain as day. plain as rain. The Arm can go In way better than it can go Out. Get used to it.
What Does this Mean?
Many baseball pitches rely on Supinating the arm..an act which is not compatible with the human body. Coaches want the arm out and the hand back...both are unnatural motions to us...yet pitchers are expected to train the supination muscles in the arm to the point where they can endure throwing 100+ pitches every 4-7 days (plus training and warm up pitches). Many have trained these muscles to do that and it is downright an act of masochism.
Maybe they love the pain, I dunno. I've worked very hard jobs in my life...and I can attest that a body will develop a Love for Pain...and it feels good to deal with it and feel it and grow from it...but we have to factor in that injuries to pitchers and time spent on the disabled list is something that happens to almost every pitcher at some time in their life at this present time. Scouts, owners, coaches and the like get heart attacks when their gem of a young arm gets injured. Can pitchers who are impervious to injury be developed? Nope. Can you develop pitchers less likely to get devastating injuries? Yes.
The Scientists are getting into it and their findings so far have been jabroni-esque, I will say, many of their published findings are in the terrain of... "oh Pronation 'aint shit, baby" sort of angles...but like I said these articles being published have been on cadavers. They cut up dead arms to see how developed the S-Muscles and the P-Muscles were in dead dudes. It is data that I don't consider relevant.
Yes, as the cadaver data suggests, you can train Supination muscles to be wicked powerful and tough but you're still dealing with muscles that are not designed to do the task being assigned to them. If the dead arms had over-developed Soup muscles then good for them....it doesn't change the actual facts for living (non-dead) humans.
If you throw soup pitches for long periods of time you WILL damage your body... an incredible amount.... no matter how much you've trained those muscles. You cannot make dat funk da p-funk!
Let's Look at Two Pitches, Ok?
I'm gonna use the top Google search videos for the two popular pitches in question and then go from there....Okay?
A Supination Standard Curve Ball:
This man is teaching the 12-6 curve and he's telling kids not to "turn the door knob" too much (OUT) although the pitch is designed with the hand opening out on release...and even though he says kids shouldn't snap off and "turn the door knob" (why are door knobs designed for supination? good question)...that's how you sell this sucker...that's how you get the fuck spin off this shit...you turn the door knob on it...you SNAP OUT....you whip out and snap off OUTWARDS with the hand. This is a poorly designed pitch.
A Pronation Screw Ball (again the first how-to google result video I got, nothing fancy):
Haha, he uses the word Pronation in it. I couldn't have asked for two better videos and they just happened to be the top google search terms for "how to throw curve" and "how to throw screw."
When the screwball first came out, people hated it, it was such a break from the normal procedure that everyone thought it was so stupid...but it is designed for a HUMAN BODY and not some kind of backward ALIEN body.
It's not new to baseball....Carl Hubbell, Tug McGraw, Mike Marshall, and Fernando Valenzuela amongst others mastered it and had amazing careers. None of them had Tommy John to replace the supination muscles....in fact one of those names in the above sentence introduced Tommy John surgery to Tommy John (my homeboy Marshall). The Man of the Science Mike Marshall introduces the Baseball World to the Science World with that recommendation to Tommy John.
Semantics get in the way a bit too. Japanese pitchers love the screw ball but they refer to it as the "Shootoh" or the "Gommu Gommu No Shootoh Sanzen Sakai Hyakuhachi Poundo Ho." The Japanese LOVE the screwball and understand the science of it. Basically, "Shooto" is the name for "screw ball" in Japan. It's not, in any way/shape/form a different pitch.... it is literally the screw ball... so all the Japanese guys who throw the Shoot-Oh are screw ballers too. Watch Dice-K whip a "Gyro-Ball" which is another fancy fucking name for the screw ball:
From the 9 second mark to the 11 second mark you can see his hand go towards himself instead of away. It is 100% a beautiful pronation pitch that doesn't destroy his arm. Whether you call it a "shoot-oh" a "gyro-barrooh" or a "100 pound dying pheonix three styles succession of my ancestors pitch" it's still the pronation break pitch in physical terms.
That's the shit he threw in Japan but when he came here to the West...he had to become a standard Curve/Change/Fast/Slider pitcher.....and what did you ("you" as in those who paid him to come here) get out of it? Tommy John surgery, that's what. Let him throw two-seamers and shoot-ohs all day and he would have pitched for 10 more years for the Red Sox.
Dice, who I saw pitch as a Met at those Jays/Mets exhibtion games in Montreal live and in the flesh before they sent him to Vegas....he looked good but.. like a fish out of water, I knew something was wrong with my boy ...this Legend was okay from the age of 19-25 in the Nippon League but only lasted two full years in the American League? Why? They wanted to change his shit and they fucked up their investment. His two-seamer and shoot-oh/gyro/screwball (whatever you want to call it) combo would have lasted another decade before breaking down. Well, then again maybe he would have got homesick and went back....he's a human... when thinking in retrospect.... it's not all this "would've this and could've that business" ..though I'm sure his demotion to Las Vegas (the Macau of the West) wasn't all that of a terrible ordeal for him.
I remember, Irabu, he pitched for Montreal and probably had fun....but a as a Yankee he was tormented into suicide. He blew his head off, as my friend Hide the Ultra Bide told me. Homesick is a real disease...so I can't just say in regards to anyone "this would have been or that would have been" ..... Rest in Peace, Mr. Hideki Irabu, I saw you pitch in Montreal at Olympic Stadium live on three occasions... people think because I'm not religious that when people die it does not break my heart,, but, yeah, it does.
Sports and Science: The Universes Collide
I'm a Mister Inbetween when in comes to Sports colliding with Science. I love Science like shit and I love Baseball like crazy. I'm really a Mr. In Between when it comes to Soup versus Pro, g. In this collision of worlds...I'm like this:
Yeah, I mean...I understand the science types...they play with cadavers and dead bodies and pretend like they're smart....yet due to their non-hands-on experience they are maybe but mere jabronies. Oh wait, that song above is a little too old...I'm more modern-ish.... I'm more In Between like this kinda In Between.......
I am actually In Between. Baseball and Science are like literally my two favorite things and just like I can see why the Science World doesn't understand the Basball World... I can see why Baseball people don't like Sciencey-smart guys too. The good ole baseball boys have been doing their country-honed methods for a century and don't want any smarty pants g-units to tell them what they are doing wrong...but sadly they are doing a lot of things terribly wrong. They sit around and chew tobacco and pretend they are smart.... everyone in both worlds are sitting around just pretending they are smart... and never learning from one another.
Everyone pretends they are smart...but....when can both these worlds just Collide in Perfect Harmony? Can the things that are Right from the world of Science and the things that are Right from the World of Baseball just combine at some point and merge..and stop being perpetually In Between?
Conclusion
Pete Rose? Who cares, man. Honestly.
Mike Marshall is the black balled player who deserves to be a Hall of Famer. This guy deserves to have his name in the Hall of Fame....twice (for player and doctor).
Mr. In Between
Add-on Note ( Sept. 06/ 2015): I didn't find a good video of the slider the other day for one of those sections but here's a good explanation of the slider and the supination it requires to be effective:
Like Carlton and Gibson mastered...this pitch has a nasty break that moves horizontally from one end to the other....but it requires a GREAT DEAL of soup to throw it and has a high risk factor when it comes to arm damage.
I've been reading a lot about the concept of "Joke Theft" recently, it's a fairly interesting thing to think about.
I don't know if anyone's ever read the "Author's Info" or whatever in the Index Section of this blog-ee-oh-lee before but in that description of myself (which is mostly STOLEN verbatim from words Beetlejuice has said over the years)...I say something along the lines of "if you read something you like in this blog you can steal it if you want, I don't care" and then I stated a joke to finish that section off which went "If I was President I'd legalize stealing!" which is of course something I STOLE verbatim from a Rudy Ray Moore joke off of the album "Dolemite for President."
So yeah, I have an open attitude towards stealing of read-words by readers, or the stealing of heard-words by listeners, I'm not super offended by the whole idea of something I thought out and wrote being read and said/wrote by someone else. Why? Because that's what humans do.
I hope people understand by now that we evolved from monkeys and the saying "Monkey See - Monkey Do" really rings true for our kind. We learn from observing and we try things for ourselves through the act of mimicking things we've seen/heard/etc before. Stealing things we observe is literally what Humans do...that's the reason why we're the top species on earth is because we're really good at emulating and learning from each other.
There's no way around the stealing of "bits" or "jokes" or "concepts" or "ideas" because that's what we do. That's the cold hard facts.
Even though this isn't a popular publication I have goin' over here, have I ever been sorta angry when I've seen something I've wrote...100% verbatim....re-produced on some other medium...and sometimes on a BIG medium? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I do think some people rip stuff off from this shitty obscure blog from time to time and some are pretty fucking famous to be honest....but even then...there's this sort of feeling of "WOW, that person reads this shit!? Cool" that goes on too. I'd say, all in all, seeing my ideas absorbed and re-vomitted back through another brain isn't that offensive to me.
I will say this: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO ABSORB THE CONCEPTS/IDEAS YOU EXPOSE YOURSELF TO.
If you grew up in the jungle away from any other humans and never learned to read/write and speak/understand any language then you'd be able to create without influence. Even then your creations would be based on things you've seen monkeys or wolves or something do in the wild. You'd make like bone-carvings out of animals you ate that look like trees or bugs you saw. Even a jungle-boy/jungle-girl, when you think about it, couldn't free themselves from outside influence.
What about a cave person? A child who grew up in a dark dark Patmos-style cave of some sort? You know, like a Poor Little Blind Girl, you know? A cave so dark she never learned to see, a cave so quiet that the poor girl never learned to hear? She eats mud and dirt and stuff. She knows "nothing about everything" but "everything about nothing"? Could she live an influence-free life? Yeah, maybe.
But us? Regular non-FacelessMay and non-N.Senada brand of humans? Can we live influence free lifestyles? NO! Us regulation non-cave-isolated humans have to abide by the laws of Monkey See and Monkey Do.....so get used to it.
If something works? We use it. If someone thinks up a good way to pick meat out of teeth, or get olives down from olive trees, or how to get from point a to point b faster....everyone will start doing it that way. Why? Because it's the best way to do it....and it works.
Look, I understand in the artistic world that intellectual property rights and identity exist and am not 100% for theft but I just want to show how hard it is not be a thief and many who accuse others of theft should think about how much shit they've stolen.
As a person who loves history, it's SUPER RARE that I can watch something and not say to myself...."oh that's like what whats-their-name does." A lot of things that "work" in show business are used for that reason...they work. You can get to the root of a lot of things that "work" and find out that these methods have been done for centuries.
Extreme Cases
I'd say I side with the defendant in about 70% of joke-theft cases. Due to the laws of Monkey See and Monkey Do...and knowing how hard it is not to be influenced by the world around you...I usually give the defendant leeway when reading about these cases and trying to form an opinion on it.
Sometimes, the case is so extreme that it's just ludicrous though. About 30% of theft cases are too effronterous to accept. I'm gonna throw out a few examples.
Jerry Lewis was A HUGE ACT back in the day and he had copy cats galore but none to the level of Sammy Petrillo who copied his voice, mannerisms, facial contorts, and hairstyle. Observe:
Petrillo, Bela Lugosi, and a Gorilla star in......oh boy.
I watched this movie the other day and it's actually pretty fucking good....but if I was Jerry Lewis....I'm sure I'd be fucking pissed that Petrillo is basically trying to pass himself off as being Jerry Lewis. It's not just a little theft here and little nip there....it's like ALL of his STUFF being ripped off.
Mitch
Another case that I find offensive was young comic Mitch Mullany (who I first saw as "White Mike" on Wayans Brothers). Mitch died in 2008 and then the very next year a guy showed up and did Mitch's act in clubs....WORD FOR WORD....and ACTION FOR ACTION. Literally stealing the whole thing under the pretense of "oh well, he's dead, he doesn't need this act anymore." Because of the untimely death of the 39 year old Mullany...this theft that I read about really stood out as being extreme and fucking stupid. It's the blatant disrespect for the young man's death.
Even though I'm usually okay with borrowing, learning, adapting, and outright stealing material....there's some extreme cases where obviously it went WAY too far.
Yet on the opposite end....
Accusers Actin' the Fool
For someone to claim theft they must first claim to own whatever was stolen...and I've seen over the years people claim ownership to things that have made me think...."Really? you OWN that? How?"
I heard aninterview once where, I think it was Jim Breuer, telling a story about how on SNL....the host was Matthew Perry and Perry was working on a bit with Norm MacDonald. Apparently, Perry wanted the bit to center around something he INVENTED called "Chandler-Speak" and Norm asked him what that was and after hearing Perry's explanation....witnesses claim Norm's response was....."Oh, you mean sarcasm?"
Yeah, it's pretty grandiose and...let's face it....retarded for Matthew Perry to claim to have invented sarcasm. That's beyond the pale. It really is beyond the pale.
Another one that got me scratching my head was a feud between Louis C.K. and Dane Cook. Now look, I know in comedy circles Dane Cook is like public enemy number one...but his target audience is a female audience and he works pretty well with that. I'm male (aged 25-35) and thus he's not my thing but I don't necessarily hate on the dude. I don't find him funny but I don't really dislike him as much as C.K., I mean with C.K.....this guy's bits are mostly penis-stuff, gross-out stuff, and other mundane shit that's standard fare....and yet somehow....Louis C.K. fans seem to think he invented penis jokes and things like that. I'm not sure a person can claim intellectual property patents on "My Ass Itches. Oh my god, my ass itches!" or "you're a penis-face!" or "I want to masturbate!" or "I wanna name my kid something funny!"
Naming your kid something funny? Wow that's original ass shit there Louis n' Dane. You both stole it.
Can you imagine a patent court setting and the plaintiff walks up and says..."Your honor, the defendant STOLE the concept of naming children funny names...and then had the nerve to talk about having an itchy butt!!"Yeah, okay there.
Speaking of Beavis and Butthead, Mike Judge once said people saying the words "[something] sucks" are ripping him off but I've seen that said in movies back in the 60s even. A good example that everyone's seen is GhostBusters where Bill Murray says something sucks a minimum of twice in the film. I like Mike Judge, and consider Beavis and Butthead to maybe be the greatest show of all time, but he did NOT invent the term of "[something] sucks." No way, Jose.
I can't find the clip from G-Bustas so here's him in Scrooged (circa 1988) using the term as well...
"Oh my gosh...does that suck."
The point of this section is....if someone is accusing someone of stealing then they are thus claiming ownership of a concept and claiming to literally OWN sarcasm, something sucking, itchy anuses, and other mundane things is pretty absurd to say the least.
It's naive too, I mean how can Perry for example really believe he invented sarcasm? What kind of an idiot can he be? Could he be any more of an idiot?
Rising to the Top
I don't want to hurt nobody's feelings or nothing, but it's safe to say that people at the top are not necessarily the most talented...but the most expert of thieves. Ninjas, even, if you will.
Word to the wise....just steal from more obscure sources and you should be safe from heat. Steal from weird-ass blogs, shit your co-workers say, guys from bars or the street...those are safe ass sources, g. No doubt.
I was watching that "Last Comic Standing" the other day and this Indian chick's opening joke was taken from the stupid "Epic Beard Man" video of that drunken maniac assaulting people on a bus. That video has been seen by millions of people....do you really think that's an obscure enough source to rob material from? Are you fucking stupid?
I watched an episode of a really shit Canadian show called "The Air Farce" once where they literally robbed a bit from SNL about Elton John almost 100% verbatim. Stealing from SNL is going to make a lot of people go..."wait a sec, I've seen this before...gimme a break." It's not a very hard to trace source.
You think the pros steal from things millions and millions of people are familiar with? NO! They get their "influences" from stuff maybe like 10-1000 people are familiar with...those 10-1000 people get mad that they recognize the bit-theft but there's still millions and millions of other viewers who don't get mad....those millions think it's wicked cool.
Conclusion
Basically, we have two choices....
A) Play off each other, learn from each other, share concepts with each other...and sadly...STEAL from each other.
or....
B) Live in a cave like N. Senada or that poor poor little blind girl from that Nomeansno song "Faceless May" and never be influenced by anything other than the feeling of cold on our sightless, audio-less, smell-less bodies.
I don't know 'bout you but I'm not going to live in some fucking cave. Fuck that shit.
(END NOTE:If everyone tries to have no influences all we'll have is surreal/absurdist comedy like the Williams Street people make. I like those shows but I wouldn't rank absurdist humor at the top of the list of comedy, to be honest. Wackiness can get old fast, the format is usually like 10 minute shows with the Williams cartoons. You can't work topical, or have a message with absurdist/surreal humor. Tim and Eric work over-the-top absurdist and it's original that's for sure but it wouldn't hurt them to have like a bit of structure. That "Bag Boy" of Steve Brule's show which had a story to it and thus some structure was one of the best things they've ever made, by far. To achieve super-originality through absurdity and nonsense is often really really funny and it's unlikely someone will say "I've seen that before" while watching it...but it's like abstract art a bit...it's just whacky shit everywhere with no rhythm or reason. )
(END NOTE 2: Conan is in the news for being sued for joke theft and the guy wants 600K, i don't know what value jokes have, I know Rodney and old timers paid the kids in the hall of clubs money for jokes, and I know Jackie Martling devised some joke-value system with Rodney that is not very scientific sounding ("I borrowed 1000 bucks from [Rodney] but I paid it back in JOKES").
That guy suing Conan, I don't know how someone can put something into the public sphere for everyone to absorb and then want 600K from people. If you wanted that joke to be TOP SECRET...THEN DON'T FUCKING TWEET IT, FUCK! If it's secret data worth 600K to you then why put it in the public for EVERYONE to see? Why not keep that six hundred thousand dollars worth of jokes under lock and key at the bottom of the sea...where no one can take it from you? Also that dude "Fat Jew" guy is getting hype from joke theft, there's so much buzz around him and I'm pretty sure he paid for the buzz. Why everyone is helping him get buzz by talking about him endlessly is beyond me. They don't like him but they are giving him all the attention humanly possible.)
(Amendment: I re-found and re-read that datum where Mike Judge claims to have invented stuff sucking...and it seems to maybe be a joke. I'm unsure but decide for yourself: (John K. interviews Mike J.)
Election season is in full swing up here in the "coolest" (literally the coldest) nation on earth....Canada.
The leaders are debating the big issues on the television screens, such as their official stances on "TV Shows" and "Movies" and other fascinating topics....
Golly gee whiz....I love TV Shows too!
This is what we get in Canada, so all you people hating on Trump down there in the states....try and imagine how Howdy Doody our election is. You Americans should be grateful for the entertainment value and debates surrounding your elections. You don't want what we have, we have people with the intelligence of five years olds debating each other up over here.
"Golly gee...Do you love TV Shows Mr. Prime Minister of Canada?" "Well howdidly doodidly ms. Reporter, oh yes, I most certainly do love Movies and TV Shows. Thanks you kindly for asking me that."
I would love to have the media circus of an American election in Canada, believe me, your shit is so much better than our shit...so don't take it for granted. Believe me, you'll miss the circus if it ever leaves town, even though you don't appreciate it now.
If one day the media circus surrounding the American election disappeared and was replaced with Trump telling you what his favorite kind of jam is and how much he loves going ice skating on the lake up near his house...believe you me....you'll be angry. You'll wonder why the circus left town and was replaced with this boring obnoxious drivel.
The thing that gets my goat the most about the lame-wad Canadian election is that people get on my case for not taking this boring garbage seriously. I've never voted in my life, when I turned 18 I felt like I should vote but when I did go to vote I'd end up writing in old Expos baseball players on the ballot when I got to the booth because I didn't know what else to do.
When I tell people that I don't vote, especially old folks, they tend to get bent out of shape over that. They look at me like I'm some sort of social pariah with no brains for not caring about Canada's lame-wad political farce. I'm not even a "young voter" anymore and don't vote so it's like a double-faux-pas apparently, but I'm a chronic non-voter and I doubt anything will ever change that.
Alrighty so, I'm gonna harness the power of statistics in this opinion piece to try and show why the fuck I don't need to give a fuck about these dumbass leckshuns at all.
Young Canadians...Does your vote even Matter?
Ok, first off we need to look at Canada's age demographics before we talk about anything else. This next link shows out of the 35.5 million dudes/chick/n' trannies that live in golly-gee jolly-gosh Canada what age group they are:
Young voters I will classify as being 18 to 30. Let's take a nice round number like 7 million to quantify "young voters" okay?
Now how many "old voters" are there? People from 31 to Soylent Green years old? Let's round it to a nice number like around 22 million.
Let's say 29 million people are voting age in Canada and young voters are 7 million of them. How is that on a pie graph? Let's take a look-see:
Beauty graph eh?
Now, it seems Young Jabronies are a pretty small piece of the votin' pie. It looks like Soylent Greeners are actually a big green Pac-Man like creature that is devouring Young Jabronies according to the data.
If you aren't familiar with statistics and sample-size and things like that... this might not have an effect on your young mind. I don't want be bursting bubbles up in here but this data is suffice to say that for every 1 vote the young people demo have...oldoes have 3 votes.
Soylent Greeners have 3x more voting power than Young Jabronies do.
Speaking in realistic terms, young voters are a niche market that's barely even worth catering to for someone trying to win an election. From a strategic standpoint that's the reason why the Red Party (Liberals) have sunk down to third place in the polls. They are trying to get young voters to vote for them and young voters is a niche market not even worth investing any time in to try and cajole.
When Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake or Justin Trudeau or whatever the fuck his name is...goes on TV and talks about smokin' blunts and takes his shirt off to do boxing promos...all it does is turn off almost 75% of voters in order to cajole less than 25% of voters. It's a horrible strategy, whoever the Liberal strategist is...that person should be let go and fast.
From the data we can clearly see that Young People's voting power is not enough for anyone to take seriously and thus when Young Jabronies pretend they are important it's just annoying and dumb.
A Four Hundred Million Dollar Boring-Ass Dog and Pony Show
Next off, let's rap loose a little bit about money. This election as everyone knows is the most boring, howdy-doody, offensively condescending, loser-filled, freak fest LOAD OF NONSENSE on the face of the planet that no one with half a brain would pay any interest in...
....and yet...
Experts and members of Elections Canada predict this election will cost tax payers 400 million at the least. Now, American readers have to remember that Canada isn't a big deal like the states is and maybe that number doesn't seem large but if we look at population and GDP, we can see that Canada is such a miniscule region that this amount of money is a pretty large sum.
USA Population: 320 million
Canada Population: 35 million
USA GDP: 17 trillion
Canada GDP: 2 trillion
Canada is not a big Juggernaut of a nation by any stretch of the word yet its Elections cost their citizens 400 million dollars each time they engage in these shenanigans. It's not big enough of a Country to have such a long and circus-esque election season.
On top of it all, the 400 million price-tagged show payed by tax payers... IS NOT EVEN ENTERTAINING AT ALL! It's lamer than fuck. It's more boring than shit. It's something only the most mentally-neglected loser could find entertainment value in. It's atrociously boring.
It's an atrociously boring 400 million dollar rinky-dinkin' Dog an Pony show that tax payers have to pay for. It's offensive by all accounts.
Conclusion
Look Young Jabronies of Canada, for you people to invest even one iota of care into these election proceedings is a gigantic mis-use of your time. For every second of care you're currently investing into politics...please take that time and invest into learning a skill, learning a trade, advancing your understanding of mathematics, read a book, write a book, go visit your grandma in the hospital or old folks home, join a rock and roll band, write a rap, preform some rap, learn how cook, etc. etc. etc.
Basically anything you do with your time, Young People, is better than wasting your time caring about politics and this lamewad of an election. There's serious problems in the world today, you can change things. You can become inventors and tech experts. You can become doctors. You can volunteer and feed the hungry n' thirsty kids of the world. You can do shit that actually isn't stupid. Your time has value.
For a young person to convince themselves to care about politics is the corruption of a young brain. It is the waste of a young person's brain power and its time here on earth...it really fucking is. If any Soylent Greener calls you dumb or uneducated or socially unresponsible because you don't vote...next time...tell that Soylent Greener to go take a bath because they smell like an old person and are disgusting.
And, as for Americans angry over the media circus of their elections and wanting it to be toned down. Be careful what you wish for, guys. Be careful what you wish for. Put yourselves in a Canadian's boots and just try to picture for one second the topics our 400 million dollar freak show covers....
"Mr. Leader what is your favorite kind of Tim Horton's Donut?"
"Honorable Member of Parliament...what kind of ice cream do you like?"
"Prime Minsiter of Canada...what color in the Smarties box tastes the best in your opinion?"
"What is your official stance on Movies and TV Shows?"
If you Americans had to be in our boots for even 5 seconds of this you'd literally kill yourselves. You wouldn't be able to handle this level of howdy doody, you wouldn't. Believe you me....you'd go crazy having to listen to this shit, man. No joke.
End Note: I think the template media-character the Canadian politicians go with is the "innocent retarded child" character. Good examples of this are Andy Merrill's "Brak" character or John C. Reilly's "Steve Brule" character. It's un-comprehensible to me how Canadian politicians go with this as their default image. Apparently the minds of Canadians is comparable to a mind of a 4 year old if these are the personas our politicians think we will relate to.
